Brooklyn, NY 11201
90 Broad Street
Kinderhook, NY 12106
917 244 8095
Brooklyn, NY 11201
90 Broad Street
Kinderhook, NY 12106
917 244 8095
Baxter Projects is an award-winning architecture studio dedicated to building healthy sustainable low-carbon spaces and structures. Founded in 2014 by Kevin Baxter, we are based in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley.
Whether it’s a new home, a renovation/new addition, or a complex multi-use structure, our experience and skills in the pursuit of intelligent, artful design allow us to execute meaningful projects of any scale that are as aspirational as they are practical and distinctly rooted in place.
With each new client/project, we bring a body of knowledge that includes engineering, art, and industrial design, to learn and grow as we further a new path in modern living and sustainability.
Kevin Baxter, Architect
Kevin Baxter is the founder and principal of Baxter Projects.
For 25 years, Kevin has worked on numerous residential and commercial projects that are recognized for their history, integration into land and topography, their vibrant interpretations of modernism and utility, and the Passive House and carbon sequestering techniques employed to conserve energy.
Prior to founding Baxter Projects, Kevin was a project architect at some of the world’s most prestigious firms and visionaries, including Pei/Cobb/Freed, Gaetano Pesce and Ennead Architects, where he led a team for the award-winning renovation and modernization of the Public Theater. Kevin also led the adaptive reuse of the Cincinnati Music Hall, built in 1878, into a twenty-first century multi-purpose concert hall.
Kevin is a educator and adjunct professor of architecure at the New York Institure of Technology and has been an invited architecture critic at the City College of New York, Pratt University, New York Institute of Technology, the Art Institute of New York, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Clemson University, and the University of Florida.
Kevin is a registered architect in New York State, a member of the American Institute of Architects, and a United States Green Building Council LEED Green Associate.
Future Cottage
Future Cottage is an experimental 650sf straw panel house in Columbia County, New York. Built of dense-packed prefabricated structural straw panels, this small-scale house absorbs carbon and works in harmony with the surrounding environment.
As a response both to soaring home square footage and extreme climate shifts, we created Future Cottage as an accessible and imaginative refuge to explore a more efficient and flexible way to build.
Future Cottage offers an adaptable dwelling that combines prefabrication with customization for any site, region or climate. Ultimately, our hope is that this smaller modern home might inspire others to consider smaller more efficient homes like Future Cottage and in turn will realize the limitless possibilities of smaller living.
Buddhist Retreat
A 10,000 square foot communal home and meditation retreat for the Buddhist Society of Compassionate Wisdom’s new farm in the Hudson Valley.
The architecture is tactile and minimalist and a direct expression of the pre-fabricated wall panels system: reinforced, structural high-density straw panels manufactured by Ecococon. The panels provide load bearing and lateral structure, insulation, and thermal mass. The straw has sequestered carbon during its growth phase, providing the project with a negative carbon footprint, even after shipping from Europe and transport to the site.
Completed in 2024.
Ghent House
A 1400 sf house on a large rural site in Columbia County, NY. The simple form of the house provides a covered porch on three sides and is a modern interpretation of vernacular farm shed structures in the region that are often overshadowed by the historic houses throughout the Hudson Valley.
Materials are humble and durable: corrugated metal, hemlock, cedar. The envelope will be air tight to create a safe and temperature stable interior environment, reducing the dependency on mechanical air conditioning.
Art Studio for a Painter
A painting studio for an artist situated on the south side of a garden opposite the main house.
The brief was simple: design a well proportioned box with high ceiling and natural light, scaled to nestle quietly at the north edge of the garden, providing a tranquil environment to create art, with a sunny porch to enjoy the garden.
Under construction.
Brooklyn Apartment
A 600sf apartment on the top floor of a 1910 brick walk-up, formery used as a sail factory, was in need of re-imagining a sunny perch near the waterfront, formerly working docks now transformed into the Brooklyn Bridge Park.
The sloping roof was concealing an orginal 10 foot wide skylight used to illuminate the workspace. In order to recapture the natural light and make the small footprint more space efficient, the floor was gutted front to back and rebuilt it as a two bedroom one bath with a work loft, increasing the usable floor area to 700sf.
Simple materials and bright colors bounce sunlight around the spaces making the apartment feel like a rooftop aerie.
Completed in 2015.
Published in Domino and Brownstoner.
Wolf Conservation Center
A proposal for a 7000sf education pavilion for the Wolf Conservation Center to support local and international educational initiatives to bring awareness to the essential role wolves play in the ecosystem.
Winner of a design excellence award by the Society of American Registered Architects.
The Public Theater
The Public Theater, housed in the historic Astor Library since 1969, was in need of extensive repairs, mechanical upgrades, and most importantly, a more open and inviting entrance to the main lobby. Executed while Kevin Baxter was a project architect at Ennead Architects.
The new exterior stair and canopy increase accessibility to the theater while also acting as a stage to connect the theater to the city.
Winner of an award of distinction by SARA and the NY Council on the A
Completed 2014.